Environment Agency to introduce standards for measuring environmental impact of food and drink companies
A new BEIS funded project aims to help food and drink companies effectively communicate their environmental performance
The Environment Agency has announced plans to standardise measures of environmental performance for the food and drink sector in a bid to minimise ‘greenwashing’ and improve environmental performance reporting across the sector.
In partnership with the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, the Waste and Resources Action Programme, and the British Standards Institute, the watchdog yesterday launched a project that aims to standardise environmental metrics in areas such as greenhouse gas reduction and resource efficiency.
The project has received a £195,000 grant from the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy’s (BEIS) Regulators’ Pioneer Fund and aims to help companies better communicate their environmental performance so as to avoid greenwashing and encourage them to incorporate greener practices into their operations.
“One of the big challenges for food businesses trying to mitigate climate change is how to communicate their environmental performance that goes beyond legal compliance effectively and efficiently,” said Becca Tremain, who is leading the project at the Environment Agency. “Different food businesses have developed and adopted various environmental metrics and it can be time-consuming for food businesses to collect data from different supplier systems.
“This project seeks to address this challenge by standardising environmental metrics for food businesses that go beyond legal compliance. It aims to provide an effective and efficient solution to enable the automation of environmental performance data transfer across different food businesses.”
Funding for the project comes from BEIS’s £3.7m Regulators’ Pioneer Fund that sponsors projects by regulators that aim to create a regulatory environment that encourages investment. It operates alongside the Better Regulation Committee, which aims to oversee an overhaul of the UK’s regulatory framework in line with the government’s strategic objectives set out in its 25 Year Environment Plan.
“Good regulation should spur entrepreneurship, not stand in its way, and this project will help keep the UK at the cutting-edge of innovation,” said Business Minister Lord Martin Callanan. “This project aiming to standardise environmental metrics for the food and drink sector could pave the way for exciting developments in the sector, bringing benefits to British businesses and consumers alike.”
In related news, the Retail Soy Group, which represents retailers advocating for the development of sustainable soy, has this week partnered with campaign groups, civil society, and technical organisations to create a roadmap to end deforestation and conversion of natural places in producing soy. The roadmap aims to provide companies with targeted steps to transform soy supply chains to more sustainable practices, as currently only three per cent of global soy production is certified deforestation-free.
